what is the RECEPTIOGATE
These aren’t just aesthetic juxtapositions.
They mirror the mechanics behind ReceptioGate:
Software pretending to replace scholarship.
Blogs pretending to replace peer reviews.
Personal vanity disguising itself as expertise.
RECEPTIOGATE LEGAL HUB
The Official Documentation Platform
Welcome to the official ReceptioGate Documentation Platform.
This website brings together verified documentation, primary sources, legal records, academic publications, institutional correspondence, and documentary evidence concerning the events collectively known as ReceptioGate.
Contrary to many online descriptions, ReceptioGate did not originate as an academic dispute.
The documented chronology shows a different sequence of events.
For more than twenty years, Prof. Carla Rossi has conducted research on manuscript dismemberment, manuscript trafficking, provenance reconstruction, and the recovery of dispersed cultural heritage. As part of this work, she identified and documented several cases involving medieval manuscript leaves removed from Italian cultural property and subsequently circulated through the international antiquarian market.
Among the documented cases were three illuminated leaves removed in 1979 from manuscript E.V.5 of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Torino and later offered for sale through Sotheby's London. The catalogue entries prepared by Peter Kidd presented the leaves as marketable objects despite their origin in a manuscript mutilated through theft.
A further case concerned a leaf removed from the Antiphonary D of Castelfiorentino. The leaf circulated on the art market accompanied by an expert opinion issued by Gaudenz Freuler, although it originated from a manuscript already known to have been stolen from an Italian collection and was subsequently recovered by the Italian Carabinieri TPC.
In August and October 2022, Prof. Rossi submitted detailed reports to the Italian Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC), providing documentation concerning manuscript dismemberment, the circulation of detached leaves, and the activities of individuals involved in the description, attribution, promotion, and commercialisation of such material.
On 20 December 2022, an article published on AboutArt publicly referred to those reports and to the broader problem of biblioclasm and the commercial fragmentation of medieval manuscripts.
Within days, a coordinated campaign of online attacks began. Through blog posts, social-media publications, anonymous communications, defamatory emails, false allegations, fabricated narratives, threats, fake obituaries, and systematic attempts at professional delegitimisation, Prof. Rossi and the RECEPTIO Research Centre became the target of a sustained and documented campaign of defamation.
The chronology presented on this platform is therefore of central importance.
The attacks did not precede the reports concerning manuscript trafficking and the circulation of leaves originating from stolen or dismembered manuscripts.
They followed them.
This website has been created to preserve the documentary record, reconstruct the chronology of events, provide public access to evidence, and distinguish verified facts from unsupported allegations.
The platform also documents the broader issues underlying the affair: manuscript dismemberment, biblioclasm for profit, provenance research, cultural heritage crime, the recovery of stolen manuscript leaves, and the protection of Europe's written heritage.
Every statement presented on this site is supported by documentary evidence, publicly accessible sources, institutional records, legal documentation, or published academic research.
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What This Site Provides
• A documented reconstruction of the origins and development of ReceptioGate.
• A complete evidence archive including legal records, institutional correspondence, judicial decisions, and primary-source documentation.
• A verified timeline based exclusively on documented events.
• Documentation relating to manuscript dismemberment, biblioclasm, provenance research, and cultural heritage protection.
• Academic publications and public statements connected with the case.
• Evidence concerning the circulation of leaves removed from Italian manuscripts and the events that followed their reporting to the competent authorities.
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Editorial Responsibility
This website is administered by Jordi Puig and Alex Martin, who are responsible for its technical management, maintenance, and editorial organisation.
The platform benefits from the academic support of Prof. Lucinia Speciale, Prof. Raffaele Pinto, and Dr. Paolo Spaggiari.
Their role is limited to the scholarly verification and editorial supervision of the materials published on this platform.
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Important Notice
By decision of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court dated 7 January 2026, the proceedings concerning the volume The Book of Hours of Louis de Roucy were definitively concluded.
The Court annulled the withdrawal of the Swiss National Science Foundation grant connected with the project and found no basis for treating the work as plagiarised or for imposing sanctions upon its author.
The judgment substantially undermined allegations that had circulated online for several years and confirmed the importance of assessing the case through documentary evidence rather than through narratives disseminated on blogs, social media, or anonymous communications.
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Explore the Documentation
→ About the Centre
→ Background
→ Timeline
→ Evidence Archive
→ Legal Documents
→ Academic Responses
→ Biblioclasm & Cultural Heritage
→ June 2026 Update: Turin MS E.V.5 and the Origins of ReceptioGate
A once-ignored blog became a tool of reputational sabotage —
not through facts or academic dialogue, but through insinuation, distortion, and algorithmic amplification.
RE:CEPTIOHATE
when defending cultural heritage becomes a target.
In ReceptioGate, the hunger for attention proved stronger than the commitment to truth. The consequences were real.
This is what can happen when questions of cultural heritage, manuscript provenance, and stolen artefacts become entangled with personal agendas, online visibility, and blog-fuelled vendettas.
The blog that helped launch the smear campaign has remained largely inactive. The documentation has not.
Since then, new evidence has emerged concerning the circulation of three leaves removed from the Turin manuscript E.V.5 and a leaf removed from the Antiphonary of Castelfiorentino, cases that lie at the heart of the events that ultimately became known as ReceptioGate.
Meanwhile, the scholar targeted by the campaign continues to publish, research, and document cultural heritage crimes, including her most recent study From Sotheby’s to Character Assassination: The Case of Turin MS E.V.5.
To understand how a report concerning stolen manuscript leaves evolved into an international campaign of defamation, watch:
ReceptioGate: From Stolen Manuscript Leaves to Character Assassination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDuQiuG0IQE
MeMeNTO.MORI
They tried to bury her with rumours — and when that wasn’t enough, they published her death notice.”
🔗 https://web.archive.org/web/20230127205042/https://www.deinadieu.ch/todesanzeigen/carla-rossi/
ALTERED TRUTH
It didn’t take much: a blog, a few blurred screenshots, and an eager audience ready to mistake gossip for truth